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Cassidian, the defence and security division of EADS, will supply the French Armed Forces with advanced identification systems used to prevent friendly fire. The French defence procurement agency, Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA), has awarded Cassidian a contract to supply 150 units of its newly developed Monopulse Secondary Radar (MSR) 1000 I interrogator for the short-range friend-or-foe identification (IFF).

The first units will be delivered by mid-2014. They are destined for installation on the Army's MISTRAL missile launchers and MARTHA air defence command and control stations as well as on the armoured launch vehicles of the Air Force's CROTALE NG missile. The contract is a part of the IFF New Generation (NG) operation, which sets out to develop equipment compliant with NATO's new Mode 5 interoperability standard. This will offer the French Armed Forces the option of upgrading their platforms.

"This contract is of strategic importance for the future," stressed Bruno Rambaud, Head of Cassidian SAS in France. "It makes Cassidian the European reference for short-range and very short-range IFF NG interrogators and it is a springboard to other markets, as the NATO allies will all eventually migrate to the new IFF standards." The MSR 1000 I is a suitable product for many platforms requiring Mode 5 such as Stinger, the German LeFlaSys or the British HVM.

The MSR 1000 I will be able to quickly and safely identify aircraft by using highly sophisticated encryption techniques to avoid hostile signal manipulation, thus overcoming the limits of the present IFF systems and facilitating commanders' decisions whether to engage aircraft or not. At the same time, a new civil mode S can thus be used by both civil and military authorities. Mode S actually helps to manage the growing volume of civil air traffic, improving the efficiency of flight control by addressing aircraft with their unique identity code.